To be sure, the Congress flip-flop underlined the gravity of the choice: political survival or national interest. Nine months since the CPM threatened to pull the plug on the UPA government, the choices begin to look different. Karat’s threat loses its potency with every passing week in the political life of the UPA government. Should a government on its death-bed worry sick about being stabbed? If the Congress wants to continue as a major political force, it should want to bestir itself and control the end game for the ruling UPA coalition rather than cede the initiative to the Left.

The “whether” question is no longer about the nuclear initiative. It is about the Congress party’s state of mind. The Congress has presided over four consecutive years of unprecedented economic performance, has ensured a measure of communal harmony, has helped create a new sense of national self-confidence, has not been tainted by any major political scandal, and is about to walk India into the elite nuclear club. It could go out to the electorate reaffirming its claim as the only national party capable of leading India. Or it could lay bare its new addiction to masochism at the hands of a whip-cracking CPM.

That brings us to the “when” question. Anyone familiar with the further procedural detail in implementing the nuclear deal — approval of a safeguards agreement by the IAEA, the endorsement of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the final mandate from the US Congress — and above all the political calendar for the impending regime change in Washington knows the clock is ticking.

... contd.